About

As UF's Digital Scholarship Librarian, my work focuses on socio-technical (people, policies, technologies, communities) needs for scholarly cyberinfrastructure. I work heavily with the Digital Library of the Caribbean (dLOC) where I am the Digital Scholarship Director, Digital Humanities Working Group and the DH Graduate Certificate, LibraryPress@UF where I am the Editor-in-Chief, and Research Computing with these and other activities geared towards enabling a culture of radical collaboration that values and supports diversity and inclusivity. Thoughts are my own. Pronouns: she, her, hers; or, we, our, ours.

Happy Birthday to the UF Digital Collections (UFDC) and SobekCM, which is the system powering UFDC and so much more! UFDC and the beginnings of SobekCM started in March 2006. In February 2008, I wrote about UFDC turning 2. At that time, UFDC had “nearly 1.5 million pages.” Now, UFDC supports more than 300 digital collections and more than 7.6 million pages of open access to unique manuscripts and letters, antique maps, rare children’s literature books, theses and dissertations, newspapers, historic photographs, oral histories, audio and video, and so much more. UFDC has grown in content, scope, and impact. Alongside UFDC, SobekCM has grown dramatically as well. SobekCM is the system poweringRead More →

Rebecca Jefferson, Curator of the Isser and Rae Price Library of Judaica at the University of Florida, recently started a blog to promote discussion of and hopefully locate more information on Count Riamo d’Hulst. Rebecca is researching the Count’s life in order to write a book about him and his role in the Cairo Genizah. She shares a fascinating story of how her research began with a single mention of Count Riamo d’Hulst in a newspaper article. She’s published on her findings thus far, but the research hasn’t been easy. In order to help locate additional materials, she’s now blogging and has created a Wikipedia entry for the Count.Read More →

The UF Digital Collections include many, many rich collections, including the University Archives Photograph Collection. One of the more exciting recent uses of the collection has been in rephotography like that done by Pam Marlin: While evocative and powerful, rephotography isn’t always easy or fast in terms of time for setup to get the correct angle for a new photo. Historypin.com has an app that makes this process simpler. There are probably many apps and tools for rephotography, but I’m most familiar with Historypin because images from the University Archives Photograph Collection in the UF Digital Collections have been loaded there. This page shows many ofRead More →

I’m working to catch up on email and work after arriving back from the Modern Language Association (MLA) Convention in Seattle. MLA was wonderful and I have many notes to type and share. In the meantime, however, this story was too good to wait. The University of Florida is in Gainesville, Florida, which is fairly rural area, and we have hawks on campus. Apparently, yesterday a young hawk made its way into the Smathers Library (formerly named Library East, and the oldest library on campus which houses Special Collections, the Digital Library, and others as well as reading rooms and study space). The story belowRead More →

This is a fabulous new position in the University of Florida Libraries. The job will entail primarily web work, but also working on the UF Digital Collections and other digital development. The position entails great colleagues, meaningful work, and technical work where things get implemented and used (so you can really see the benefits and impact of your work). Full Announcement POSITION: Information Technology Expert – (Digital Development unit member, developer) REPORTS TO: Information Technology Senior SALARY: Anticipated salary is $55,442.79 annually Requisition #: 0810081 DEADLINE DATE: January 9, 2012 JOB SUMMARY: The Information Technology department serves as the focal point for planning, managing and coordinatingRead More →

“Digital Platforms and the Future of Books” January 20 & 21, UF, Smathers Library, Room 1A As cultural and intellectual discourse becomes digitized at an ever-accelerating rate, what will become of books? According to several prominent literary theorists, the decline of print culture — “the civilization of the book” — makes us acutely aware of different kinds of writing that fit hand in glove with broadened notions of textuality. Contemporary scholarship across the humanities continues to interrogate the vitality of books in the twenty-first century. For instance, how have books shaped our conventional notions of authorship and commonplace reading practices? Looking ahead, how might theRead More →

The 2012 Digital Assembly Symposium “Digital Platforms and the Transformation of Intellectual Discourse” will be held 1/20-1/21/2012 at UF. Featured speakers will include David Blakesley (Campbell Chair in Technical Communication and Professor of English, Clemson University; Founder & Publisher, Parlor Press), Jay Bolter (Wesley Chair of New Media, Georgia Institute of Technology), Bob Stein (Founder & Director, Institute for the Future of the Book), and Elizabeth Swanstrom (Assistant Professor of English, Florida Atlantic University). More details will be forthcoming from the Department of English.Read More →

The “Writing the Digital Humanities” a conference is by graduate students in Laurie Gries’s current seminar and will be held 12/8/2011 from 1-6pm in Pugh Hall 210. Details: The Digital Humanities is an emergent field of study currently being “written” by scholars across the humanities. This conference highlights innovative scholarship being produced by graduate students in the Department of English, who are working at the intersections of computing and media studies, children’s literature, writing studies, queer studies, creative writing, and ecocritism. All panel presentations will take place in Pugh Hall 210. 1 PM, Opening remarks by Laurie Gries 1:15 PM, Panel A, “Interfaced Materialities.” Caroline Stone, Sean Printz, and Joan Shaffer. 2:25Read More →

The Library Enhancement Program in the Humanities is a wonderful opportunity for UF faculty to enhance the Libraries’ physical and digital collections, including funding the digitization and acquisition of materials for worldwide open access of materials currently held only locally in other libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural heritage institutions. CFP: UF Center for the Humanities and the Public Sphere: Call for Proposals 2012-2013 The Center for the Humanities and the Public Sphere is pleased to announce its call for proposals for 2012-2013. These programs will be supported by the Robert and Margaret Rothman Endowment for the Humanities and the Humanities Fund. The Center encourages proposalsRead More →

The story below is from the most recent Library News from the UF Libraries for UF Faculty. NewspaperCat is powered and hosted within the UF Digital Collections (powered by SobekCM). This has been a great project for the UF Digital Collections to support because it was an active and valid use case for a record-only collection portal, which is often a wanted option for different research, teaching, and public service needs. There’s more in the story below and check out NewspaperCat to see it in action! Libraries create catalog of digital historical newspapers The Catalog of Digital Historical Newspapers (NewspaperCat) is available at www.newspapercat.org. NewspaperCatRead More →